A writer of fables explains them as a mistake, tracing their origin to
a drunken night when Prometheus created women and men with the wrong
genitalia. An astrologer blames them on the same planetary configuration
that produces eunuchs. A church father opines that no right-thinking
person would share a cup with them, much less kiss them. Appealing to
decorum, a rhetor cautions declaimers about discussing them too openly in
speeches. A Lucianic character -- even in a racy dialogue -- professes
shame
at having to utter their name. For the women called "tribades", ancient
male writers in general want to show nothing but disgust. That tradition
of focused hostility, argues Bernadette Brooten in this impressive and
indispensable new book, is essential background to early Christian
teachings on sexuality.

If you do not know what type of women "tribades" are, no wonder. The
word tribas (from tribein, "to rub" i.e. sexually)
appears in Greek and Latin only a few dozen times in all, and not before
the Roman empire. Take the sources mentioned above -- Phaedrus, Ptolemy,
Tertullian, the elder Seneca and the (fourth century) author of the
Lucianic Amores -- and you are well on your way through the
explicit references to tribades. Add a fleeting comment by the younger
Seneca, a few of Martial's epigrams, an innuendo in Lucian, and an aside
in the medical writer Caelius Aurelianus' discussion of male
homosexuality, and you have read practically all that can be called
descriptive. Imperial astrological writers do mention tribades with some
frequency, but always in the summary lists of outcomes that such-and-such
a horoscope is supposed to portend. The remaining sources are for the most
part equally succinct: passing statements in Artemidorus'
Dream-Book, in a late and anonymous physiognomy manual, and by a
few
scholiasts of the late antique or Byzantine era. Other than Tertullian
(who translates tribas as frictrix), no Christian
writer mentions the tribades by name. But all the same it is clear
that
early church fathers thought they should burn in hell.

What precisely were these women doing to attract such reactions? D.M.
Halperin (in OCD3 [1996] s.v. "Homosexuality") has
offered a good working
definition of tribadism: "the sexual penetration of women (and men) by
other women, by means of either a dildo or a fantastically large
clitoris". The latter mode is obviously absurd. But as Halperin notes,
this ancient construct in fact is "the female same-sex sexual practice
that imperial Greek and Roman writers alike singled out for comment". Now,
as early as Seneca's Controversiae, we see a distinction between
the "artificial" and "natural" tribade. The trouble for us is that no
Greek or Roman writer actually describes that "natural tribade" or her
activities in any real detail. Serious modern discussions of these sources
have been few, basically J. Rosenbaum in his amazing (but widely ignored)
Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthume (8th edition, 1921)
143-146, W. Kroll in RE s.v. "Lesbische Liebe" (an excellent short
exposition) and J. Hallett in Yale Journal of Criticism 3 (1989)
209-227. Hallett's is an in-depth study but one largely confined to the
evidence of Phaedrus, the two Senecas, and Martial. For Christian
attitudes, the first place to look has been John Boswell's
Christianity,
Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (1980), followed by
his Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (1994). But those volumes
have some serious flaws, as any number of reviewers have managed to show.

Now there is B[rooten], who goes toe to toe on many important issues
with not just Boswell, but also Michel Foucault, Halperin and more than a
few other influential scholars. A major aim of Love Between Women
is "to understand ancient conceptualizations of female homoeroticism in
the context of cultural constructions of the female" (p. 25). There B.
claims her predecessors have come up short -- particularly Boswell, who
"failed to explain why Roman and Greek authors employed such terms as
'monstrous', 'worthy of death', and 'contrary to nature' when writing
about sexual love between women" (p. 12). B. goes further than to explore
ideology. Indeed she aims to use our scraps of ancient testimony "to
reconstruct the history of the women against whom these authors were
reacting" (p. 25). It is always hard to piece together "realities" from
polemicizing texts. But as a historian of the early church (the author
holds a chair in Christian Studies at Brandeis) B. is admirably suited to
the task.

B.'s centerpiece is a detailed analysis of Paul's Letter to the
Romans 1:26ff ("... Their women exchanged natural intercourse for
unnatural ... [a long list of transgressions follows] ... those who
practice
such things deserve to die"). B. interprets it as an explicit condemnation
of female homoeroticism, and tries to explain Paul's words especially in
the context of what she argues to be contemporary Roman attitudes toward
sexual love between women. B. has published on that vexing Paul passage
before, most notably in a 25 page article in a composite volume a dozen
years back. In the interim so have almost forty other scholars, to judge
from B.'s annotated bibliography on the question (pp. 363-372). B.'s
renewed discussion of Paul now fills more than a quarter of this 400-page
book. In truth, what Love Between Women really is about is "to
provide readers with a solid basis for interpreting Paul's teaching on
homoeroticism" and furthermore "for bringing that interpretation into
church and public policy debates about lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals"
(pp. 192-193). So we get a lot of modern comparanda as well.

In brief, B. argues that "throughout Western history we find the male
creators of culture and of ideology wavering between assuming that sexual
relations between women do not exist at all -- indeed cannot exist -- and
imagining that if they do, then the women must be capable of penetration"
(p. 190). As for that notion, "this focus on penetration as the principal
sexual image led to a simplistic view of female erotic behavior and a
complex view of the erotic choices of free men" (p. 49). In the Roman
imperial era, B. maintains, the phenomenon of female same-sex love
received increased attention and (before long) broad societal recognition.
But why the hostility? In ancient Mediterranean concepts of sexuality
"active and passive define what it means to be masculine/feminine" (p.
125; cf. 157 n. 43). If a female plays the penetrating (i.e. active) part,
she transgresses those fundamental categories. Such a woman acts "contrary
to nature". But so too, it appears, if a woman allows herself to be
penetrated by another woman. The logic is skewed, but B. argues that just
goes to show "female homoeroticism did not fit neatly into ancient
understandings of sexual relationships as essentially asymmetrical" (p.
76).

Most of the twelve chapters of Love Between Women are devoted
to filling out that picture of Roman-era notions of female homoeroticism.
This model -- which I must leave to others to critique in detail -- has
(for
the most part) the advantage of some good textual evidence to recommend
it. But B. also argues that the views of Paul and later church fathers on
sex between women were not all that far off from those of non-Christian
authors. To make her point, B. manages to pull in some quite recondite
sources for female homoeroticism from the Greek, Roman and Jewish worlds
(all thankfully indexed at pp. 395-407). As it turns out, B. can offer no
non-Christian author who judges homoerotic women "worthy of death" or of
savage punishments in the underworld. That of course has implications for
the acceptance of B.'s overarching thesis. But all the same, for the
Greeks and Romans B. has collected some indisputably grim material.

In Chapter II, B. surveys the harsh attitudes toward female same-sex
love in "élite" Greek and Latin authors. Here B. accepts
unhesitatingly
the view of Judith Hallett that elite Latin writers employed a consistent
literary technique to deny outright the existence of tribades
among Roman citizen women, namely one of "masculinization",
"hellenization" and "anachronization" (pp. 43, 50). The texts B. surveys
without a doubt "masculinize" the tribades -- how could they not? What
"hellenization" we find, however, seems no more than a function of a
general Roman tendency to use Greek terms for sexual matters. Celsus
(6.18.1) explicitly describes that habit, which one can easily document
for countless other practices unconnected with female homoeroticism. To
take an example at random, Ausonius (Epigr. 85) actually spells
out Greek leichei (dicere me Latinum non decet
opprobium) when reviling a certain Eunus for "what you do".
Conversely, the god in the Priapea (3.9-10) half-apologizes for
"speaking Latin" when he uses the verb paedicare. And the
"anachronism" argument is no less easy to buy. For instance, in Phaedrus'
aetiological fable (4.16), B. observes that "a tribas possesses a
phallus, given her ... in the distant past, far removed from the Roman
present" (p. 45-46). True, but the point of such tales is precisely to
explain the origin of a contemporary survival. Phaedrus makes that point
quite clear for the tribade (ita nunc libido pravo fruitur gaudio):
the nunc is absolutely at odds with "anachronization". B.
also notes that, alongside the alleged "denial" response, "other ancient
authors describe the threat of female homoeroticism as one very close to
home" (p. 50). So with all this obsessive emphasis on the tribades, would
it not be more useful to exchange Hallett's framework of "the denial of
Roman reality" -- a phrase by which she sought to encompass not just those
supposed distancing techniques but also the silly anatomical descriptions
-- for "the affirmation of unreality"?

"Roman poets satirized tribades, while physicians attempted
to cure them" (p. 190). That "tribadism" was in fact an ancient medical
diagnosis is B.'s argument in Chapter V (pp. 143-173). B. singles out two
pieces of conflicting evidence to make her case. The first is a passage in
the (fifth century AD) medical writer Caelius Aurelianus, from his Latin
translation of Soranus' (lost) work On Chronic Diseases. In an
aside (4.9.132) Caelius compares male pathics (molles mares) to
"the women who are called tribades". In this comparison he reveals that he
considers tribades to have a mental disease -- but one from which they can
be freed or at least temporarily relieved. Despite some demonstrable
interventions by Caelius in this very passage, B. confidently ascribes all
the main thought to Soranus himself. That apparently includes talk of
"divine providence" ordaining male and female sex roles (see p. 149 with
148 n. 13 and 150 n. 19). What B. concludes from all this is that Soranus
established "an enduring and influential view of tribades as women who
suffer from a chronic disease of the soul that the physician should treat
by mind control." (p. 146).

B.'s second item is the apparent
contents of Soranus' chapter "Concerning an Immensely Great Clitoris and
Clitoridectomy" in his Gynaikeia IV, as reconstructed from Caelius
Aurelianus and two other later works. B. shows "the clitoridectomy texts
assume that an overly large clitoris is a penis-like organ, capable of an
erection" (p. 168). The trouble is that Caelius -- on B.'s reading -- says
this makes women less eager for intercourse (i.e. with men), while the two
other authorities (Mustio and Paul of Aegina) assert the opposite. None of
the three translators says a word about tribades in relation to the
clitoridectomy procedure, which has led at least one scholar recently to
dispute its relevance to that construct (p. 24). However B. asserts it
must refer to tribadism by process of elimination (p. 160 "specifically,
[the clitoridectomy texts] speak of these women as capable of taking on
the active, penetrative role"). But as B. herself notes, it is odd in
light of that first passage -- which incidentally said nothing about the
clitoris -- that here "Soranos advises a bodily treatment, namely surgery,
for women who behave like men" (p. 170). All the same, B. does not make
too much of the contradiction (p. 170): "a culture that cannot tolerate
female assertiveness in sexual matters will probably try to control female
homoerotic behavior by whatever means...." Elsewhere B. refers to that
contradiction as evidence of actual "medical debates about the etiology of
the disease of male passivity and female bisexuality" (p. 346).

To my mind that medical chapter is the least convincing in the book.
First, the problems of distinguishing "Soranus", "Soranian" and
"Pseudo-Soranus" from texts such as Caelius are notoriously difficult. It
seems that Caelius will even put Christian notions directly in the mouth
of Soranus, if it serves his rhetorical purpose: see now A.E. Hanson and
M.H. Green in ANRW II 37.1 (1995) pp. 970-981, esp. p. 980 on
Chronic
Diseases 4.9 itself. There is no guarantee against that aside on
tribades being Caelius' own "contribution" to the discussion of molles
mares. Indeed, it is quite likely to be intrusive -- given the
nature of that section of the Chronic Diseases, which
conspicuously reflects the temper of Caelius' times.

One wonders
also why Caelius should stand alone in his translation of that second
passage from Soranus' Gynaikeia, on the effects of a large
clitoris. When Caelius says women with this condition acquire a similar
appetite for sex as men and in venerem coacte veniunt, B. takes
it that such women "approach sexual intercourse (i.e. with men) only under
duress". The logic is hard to follow. But if we take coacte
here as "swiftly" (cf. Chronic Diseases 2.10.75 leviter atque
coacte), Caelius falls fully in line with his fellow translators
Mustio and Paul of Aegina. To reconstruct Soranus' original rationale for
clitoridectomy, we might turn to yet another late medical writer, the
sixth century physician Aetius (whom B. discusses on pp. 169f). Aetius
explains that the constant rubbing of the clitoris against a woman's
garments "stimulates a desire for intercourse". What B. cites of Aetius in
fact suggests that he is drawing on the same basic tradition as the
'Soranic' authors. Compare Aetius' observation that an overly large
clitoris PRO\S SUNOUSI/AN O(RMH\N E)PEGEI/REI with Paulus'
statement that the women in question PRO\S SUNOUSI/AN O(RMW=SIN (p.
169 n. 68 with 165 n. 60), or the description of the (horrible) procedure
itself. In sum, B. has no good reason to assert that "later medical texts
explicitly connect the selective clitoridectomy with female homoeroticism"
(p. 25). The issue seems to be simply hypersexuality in general, as Hanson
has argued (see her remarks cited in B.'s p. 166 n. 62).

Before
leaving the doctors, I should say that Caelius Aurelianus' usage of
tribades is not far removed from B.'s own definition of the term in
this book. Faced with a multiplicity of ancient descriptions (see the
summary roster at p. 76) -- none of course very illuminating -- B. in a
way
takes the lowest common denominator by defining tribades (merely) as
"women who actively seek sexual relations with other women" (p. 144).
Elsewhere B. is even more all-encompassing: "women transgressing the
social norms for what constitutes proper female behavior and behaving like
men" (p. 337). In a word, for B. tribas means "culturally
masculine" (p. 123). B. even suggests that "perhaps we should translate
tribas as 'lesbian'" (p. 7), at least in what seems to be the
medieval sense of the word: a "woman 'who behaves like a man' (i.e. usurps
a male cultural role) and 'is oriented toward female companions for sex'"
(p. 17). B. thinks "no one has yet demonstrated a decisive developmental
break that would require us to speak of tribades for antiquity and
Lesbiai for the Middle Ages" (p. 23). So it is conceivable, argues
B., that homoerotic women in antiquity even referred to themselves as
'tribades': Christians, Jews and followers of Isis were also accused of
horrible things in antiquity -- yet still used those names (p. 7).

Now, it does seem that our later (i.e. after AD 400) sources do often use
tribas in the same generic sense as Caelius. But in the
(?fourth century) pseudo-Lucianic Amores 28 the term can still be
described as a rarely mentioned obscenity, and the sense that it was all
about penetration is very much alive. Earlier writers offer no good
counter-examples. The absence of the actual word tribas in
higher-status classical genres and all the church writers (even Tertullian
resorts to frictrix) also tells against the validity of B.'s
definition for the Roman era, not to mention tribas as a term
of self-reference.

It unfortunately comes as no real surprise to
learn that there was a long tradition on "Sappho the tribade", which B.
outlines in a particularly informative section of her Chapter II. But here
B. goes so far as to say that "discrediting the intellectual achievements
of Sappho by attacking her sexual life may have contributed to the loss of
nearly all Sappho's writings, plus other women associated with her" (p.
38). For B., the tribadic slur "served to discredit [Sappho] among women
and thereby to limit women's intellectual and creative role models" (p.
360). Yet there is an important piece of evidence from Roman Egypt (not
cited by B.) that may help us avoid this depressing hypothesis. In
November of the year AD 130 one Julia Balbilla -- the last descendant of
the
Seleucid kingdom of Commagene -- travelled to Egyptian Thebes as a member
of
the emperor Hadrian's touring party. There on the famous "Colossus of
Memnon" she prominently carved in the archaic Lesbian dialect a cheeky
poem in which she provocatively casts herself as Sappho and the "lovely"
empress Sabina as one of her circle: for the text, see A. and E. Bernand,
Les inscriptions grecques et latines du Colosse de Memnon (1960)
no. 30 (and cf. 31). If one is going to argue that Sappho was
"discredited" as a role model in this general period, Balbilla's
inscription -- carved into one of the most famous pieces of stone in the
ancient world -- is a formidable obstacle.1

Chapter III, an involved discussion of some homoerotic spells
from Roman Egypt, finds B. just a bit less pessimistic. These spell
tablets B. considers "the most tangible evidence we have about women who
desired other women" (p. 105), despite their rigid formulaic aspect (even
in the most detailed the scribe did not bother to decline the names of the
relevant parties). B. goes on to suggest that "the modern reader may find
it striking that the religion of these spells does not prohibit sexual
love between women, and its [chthonic] deities express no disapproval of
it" (p. 112; cf. 80). For this reader, it is hardly a relief to find that
a woman was secure in asking Pluto, Anubis and a corpse-daemon to help her
attract another woman! Nor is it easy to believe, with B., that forcing a
victim to love for "five months" in one spell or "unceasingly" in another
suggests in itself any sort of permanent living arrangement.

One
of the few other respites B. offers from ancient homophobia in Love
Between Women is Plutarch's mention (obiter) of love between
women and girls in Lycurgus' old Sparta (Lyc. 18.4, on which see
pp. 50 -- but B. is mistaken to think the whole citation quoted refers to
females -- and 350). Another is an enigmatic Augustan funerary urn with
two
freedwomen clasping hands, which B. takes as possible evidence for a
"common living arrangement" (p. 334 with 59f). Indeed throughout this book
B. takes the references (mostly in highly polemical sources such as
astrologers and church fathers) to women "appointing wives", "marrying
other women" and the like as "intriguing hints" of an actual "societal
institution" (p. 139). In short, for B. "the ancient references to
woman-woman marriage suggest the existence of female homoerotic
relationships that enjoyed some level of tolerance" (p. 335). To me these
particular passages seem simply to caricature egregiously "shameless"
behavior, and as such are no doubt quite exaggerated. Public displays of
this sort consistently attract the more virulent condemnation, as B.
herself notes (pp. 121, 134, etc.). To make the case for tolerance, one
might do better to search for descriptions of romantic friendships. B.
does have a valuable short discussion of the evidence for "special
friendships among early Christian women" (at p. 351 n. 205). But the
investigation might be extended to Roman-period literature. One
immediately thinks of Fortunata and Scintilla at Satyricon 67 (not
mentioned by B.). These women manage to drink, gossip, embrace and
kiss -- though in consequence one of them does fall victim to a nasty
prank.

For the Roman world, B. is at her most illuminating on the
popular (or to use her term, "nonelite") sources. Consider B.'s lucid
treatment of the astrologers (Chapter IV, pp. 115-141). When seeking to
sort out attitudes toward sexuality in the Roman empire, few since Kroll
have thought of turning to Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos or the
Anthologies of Vettius Valens. But these astrological works of the
second centuries AD (and there are many other later ones like them) have
much to say on the desirable and undesirable effects of particular
horoscopes -- of course providing for us valuable insight into
contemporary
social assumptions, as B. rightly notes. Graphic astrological predictions
(often dire) of the nature of an individual's sexual life abound. For
instance, Ptolemy pronounces as a general maxim (Tetr. 3.14.8)
that under a bad planetary configuration "women exceed their natural
state, men their unnatural state". In a worst-case astrological situation,
this might mean the birth of "men who have lost their genitals or the
so-called tribades" (Tetr. 4.5.16). This is just one of
many passages which shows that for the astrological writers female
masculinization corresponds to male feminization (cf. p. 129). B. also
makes a very important point -- against David Halperin and others -- that
"the
astrological sources demonstrate the existence in the Roman world of the
concept of a lifelong erotic orientation" (p. 140; cf. 242f).

From reading these astrological texts, it also appears these authors
thought the "natural" tribade not so common, but all the same a very real
physical phenomenon. Other sources from Ptolemy's general era such as the
Dream-Book of Artemidorus (which B. discusses in Chapter VI, pp.
175-186) attest to the spell this type of tribade had on the popular
imagination. His assessment is inevitably also negative. "In Artemidorus'
eyes, female penetration is not real penetration, and female homoeroticism
is a pale and futile imitation of male sexual behavior" (p. 186). As such,
it was "unnatural" -- so much so that Artemidorus compares it to
intercourse
with a deity, corpse or animal (p. 183).

B. rightly stresses that
"the social attitudes found in Artemidorus are not his individual
creation, but rather representative of broader cultural streams" (p. 177).
So B. seems on the mark in her contention (explored in Chapters VII-XI)
that Paul (in Rom. 1:26f), the apocalyptic literature, and the
early church fathers all pick up (in varying degrees) on these
non-Christian images and concepts. Pagan and Christian authors alike share
"the active/passive distinction, the natural versus the unnatural, female
subordination, lack of focus on procreation in the condemnation of female
homoeroticism ... and a struggle to fit female homoeroticism within an
asymmetrical phallocentric construction of sexuality" (p. 193). B. tepidly
offers that "early Christian writers differed in one important respect
from many of their contemporaries: they more frequently classified female
and male homoeroticism together" (p. 355). But one really has to add -- in
spite of B.'s massive cumulative argument -- that only Christians want
homoerotic women to die and burn in hell. And that in spite of the fact
(as B. emphasizes on p. 194) that there is no statement of Jesus on the
topic.

B.'s energetic collection of so many relevant ancient
passages (usually cited in both the original and English translation) is
in itself a major achievement. She goes far beyond Hallett and comes up
with material unknown even to Kroll and Boswell. In truth, B. might have
offered us even a bit more. Surely relevant is the Mesotribas
that Blaesus of Capri produced for the south Italian stage (Athenaeus III
111 C). We get a discussion of Juvenal 6.306-311 (p. 48) but not the
equally relevant lines that soon follow (6.320-323). Add to that Eusebius'
salacious description of homoerotic activity in the precinct of Venus at
Aphaca, a wild "school for vice" where the women are said to engage in
"lawless [paranomoi] couplings, marriage-stealing associations,
unspeakable and abominable acts" (Life of Constantine 3.55.3, with
Rosenbaum's discussion in his Geschichte p. 181). Consider perhaps
also Zeno's description (Tract. 1.3.2) of the goddess Cybele as an
anus turpis atque amatrix (?= tribas) worshipped by
castrated Galli. And (much later) there is Tzetzes' scholion to Hesiod
WD 693, where he warns that young wives of older men are
particularly prone
to tribadic activity. There is also the grammarian Moeris, who offers the
intriguing item (s.v. hetairistria) that tribas was
avoided in the Attic dialect. Incidentally, the diatribe of Dio Chrysostom
(Orat. XXXIII) against the (male homoerotic) "snorting disease" of
Tarsus -- just a generation or so after Paul -- seems quite relevant to
Rom. 1:26f, as Rosenbaum (Geschichte p. 129) recognized. So
the "urban center" B. tentatively suggests (pp. 261f) Paul had in mind in
composing this passage may not have been Rome but instead his hometown.

Additional items on female homoeroticism may well emerge if one
goes searching for "tribade" synonyms. As Brooten keenly observes, in the
astrology world Firmicus Maternus uses virago (pp. 5, 133f),
Ptolemy erastes [sic!] (p. 127), and Hermes Trismegistos
crissatrix (p. 131). For others, B. notes, "'masculine desires' is a
code word for tribades" (p. 25). She then suggests that this is
the background to Horace's mascula Sappho (Epist. 1.19)
and the mascula libido of the witch Folia (Epodes 5.42)
(pp. 34f). B. is surely right here, and she has the scholia to Horace on
her side.

Indeed, it may be especially appropriate that we find
tribadism linked with witchcraft, for really both seem to belong to the
realm of the fantastic. Once we leave aside that intrusive Caelius
Aurelianus passage, we see the medical writers have absolutely nothing to
say on the subject of "tribades". (And that despite the fact they can talk
in plain prose about the most graphic sexual matters -- see e.g. Galen XII
249 K.) This is a valuable clue -- one corroborated by the type of sources
where we do find it (declamation, satire, astrology and other
pseudo-scientific manuals, church polemic) -- that the educated elite did
not believe the phenomenon (at least in the "natural" form) to exist.

By way of proof, thumb through Rosenbaum. There one quickly finds that
the same sources that give us "natural tribades" offer a lot of similar
malarky. For example, there are in satire a host of sexually transmitted
diseases that Rosenbaum notes show up in no medical text. None of the
various diseases satirists associate with oral sex -- bad breath, tooth
ache, hoarseness, paralysis of the tongue, etc. -- rate a mention in
medical authors, still less a treatment. Nor does a single doctor worry
about
pederasty causing the tumor known as ficus (Geschichte
pp. 120-125, 220-232, 244-249). This in itself should caution us against
using satire to read Soranus, as B. in effect does. For there is no basis
to assume close correlation between "popular" and "educated" sexual
beliefs. That emerges clearly e.g. from Pliny's dismissive discussion (NH
10.32) of the "vulgar" misconception that ravens copulate with their
mouths -- which of course does not stop Martial (14.74) from exploiting
the
notion (Geschichte p. 235). And even in B.'s "nonelite" sources,
tribades consistently represent an extreme. Here one gets the impression
that folks only worried about the natural sort, which they considered a
very rare phenomenon, and somewhat of a prodigium when it did
occur.

For this reader, Love Between Women succeeds in
its main argument, "that Paul condemns sexual relations between women as
'unnatural' because he shares the widely held cultural view that women are
passive by nature and therefore should remain passive in sexual relations"
(p. 216). The book as a whole marks a real advance in its field, and shows
the dividends that can flow from first-hand acquaintance with a wide range
of ancient sources. More often than not, B.'s detailed individual
interpretations of the Greek and Roman evidence are compelling or at least
reasonable. Only a few of her major arguments seem unacceptably
tendentious. And B.'s lucid introductory sketches of the ancient subgenres
relevant to her study (magical papyri, physiognomic handbooks, etc.) are
in themselves fully worth the price of this well-produced volume. But
after reading all the evidence that B. has collected, it is still
difficult to conclude that all that many in antiquity saw female same-sex
love as much of an issue. Significantly, in B.'s centerpiece of
Romans 1:18-32 Paul mentions women's "unnatural" intercourse only as
part of a long catalogue of sexual and social behaviors. And that list is
apparently meant to set up the much larger argument of 2:1-3:20, on the
relative moral conditions of Jews and Gentiles.2

I might raise one last question, not
specifically addressed by B. Where did that bizarre notion of the tribade
come from in the first place? To trace the development of the construct is
not easy, but the evidence collected in B.'s own book offers a starting
point: the sex manual ascribed to 'Philainis'. B. notes that Martial and
Ps.-Lucian both bring the name 'Philainis' into connection with tribadic
activity (p. 46 n. 58). And on that latter text, the scholiast explains
'Philainis' as a woman whom an Athenian comic poet Philocrates ridiculed
"as a hetairistria and tribade" (p. 55 n. 119). B.'s explanation
is that "Philainis, reported to have written a book on sexual positions,
symbolizes the public shame of the tribades: a woman writing
about sex" (p. 55). But one wonders whether that pornographic book --
known
even in antiquity as a forgery by the Athenian sophist Polycrates --
itself
featured a tribade of the artificial or even "natural" variety. At any
rate, the character of "Philaenis the tribade" soon seems to have made it
to the stage, in Athens and perhaps far beyond (remember Blaesus'
Mesotribas). Once introduced, the notion of the tribade took on a
life of its own -- though I would argue not for all.

NOTES

1. I should admit that I
discuss this not particularly well-known inscription in an article in CW
(forthcoming), "The Poets Julia Balbilla and Damo at the Colossus of
Memnon".

2. I thank Dr. June Phelps and
also
Prof.
Brent Shaw for discussing the Christian material in B.'s book with me;
they are however in no way to be held responsible for any particulars of
this review.